Braintree Acquires Venmo, Goes After PayPal

August 22, 2012

10:00 am

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Braintree, which allows business to process credit card payments online, announced its acquisition of startup Venmo last Friday.

Venmo lets you pay friends for things like drinks or a cab ride using a bank transfer, debit card, or credit card. By joining forces with Braintree, the two companies can move toward the utopian “digital wallet,” where you can pay businesses, businesses can pay each other, and you can pay your friends without the hassle of cash.

“Mobile payments and digital wallets are beginning to be more widely accepted as the technology catches up to the needs of today’s merchants and consumers, and they will become the standard method of payments in well less than a decade,” says Braintree CEO Bill Ready.

“With 30 million credit cards already stored, Braintree is poised to directly take on PayPal as an online and mobile payments provider for both merchants and customers,” Ready added.

Following the acquisition, Venmo’s peer-to-peer payment service will remain intact and become an option for some of Braintree’s customers, which include Angry Birds, LivingSocial, and Airbnb. The New York startup also plans to release tools for other app developers to add Venmo payments.

The acquisition comes just 5 months after Venmo launched publicly, after spending two years growing out its product and team.

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Kira M. Newman is a Tech Cocktail writer interested in the harsh reality of entrepreneurship, work-life balance, and psychology. She is the founder of The Year of Happy and has been traveling around the world interviewing entrepreneurs in Asia, Europe, and North America since 2011. Follow her @kiramnewman or contact [email protected]